I’ve had a couple soil tests in various spots done over the years, and one result which I’ve not been sure what to think of was the soil salinity in one or two specific spots. Some background - the guy that owned this property before us did winter plowing and salting professionally, and had a large outbuilding at the northeast corner of the property in which he stored sand and salt. So he had lots of that stuff available. When I first planted fruit trees, I planted my peaches along the concrete drive down from that building. That was before I’d done any soil tests.
After I did soils tests, I discovered that the spot I had tested in that peach row, adjacent to that drive, tested at 625ppm sodium. That’s compared to other typical spots in my yard testing at 10 to 20 ppm. So my guess is the previous owner salted that drive heavily in the winter, and plowed that salted snow off to the side. The lab flagged that 625 as ‘very high’, but I’ve always been curious; just how “very high” is that?
I’d be curious to know what the highest sodium results some other people have seen are, and how/if that affected their plants? The peaches and pawpaws have been there for something like 7 years now in the oldest cases, and they don’t seem to suffer overly much, Though a couple plants have suffered sudden problems this year. I’d appreciate any other examples or advice.